Felix: Do you notice an uptick in demand around natural disasters or certain predisposed geographical areas?
Eugene: There’s certainly a big uptick anytime there’s a disaster. In the fall, there’s usually hurricanes in Louisiana, Texas, Florida, almost every year, at least one if not a handful. Generally when they announce that a hurricane is on its way, all their local Home Depots and Lowe’s, everybody sells out because they don’t have that much inventory. People then switch to looking online, which is its own logistical issue of getting it there before the storm. Sometimes possible and sometimes not. You can’t really get it there after the storm because there’s usually debris or flooding. It can be a month until you get them the item.
Last year in Texas, we had that major freeze, which was very atypical for us. It spurred demand. A lot of people lost power. Last year, Texas was our number one market–usually japan phone number list number four or five. That disaster in February spurred demand for the rest of the year because people wanted to make sure that the following year they were more prepared.
Two, three years ago California started having their wildfire issues and they were shutting power down to people’s homes without any notice. Then California became a hotspot. Any new disasters that happen or any new infrastructure issues can lead to that market being either temporarily or permanently a new fixture.
Felix: Do you have a protocol of action when you anticipate this kind of stuff happening?
Eugene: Generally it’s very sudden. It’s nothing that we can really react to when it happens, but we try to be prepared for things like hurricanes because they happen every year. By the summertime we try to be prepared. We usually have one more customer service rep than we actually need just because we know in the second half of the year, it could be very, very busy.